Ajay Kumar Nair is a student and writer from Chennai, India. His work has appeared in Isacoustic, Rattle, The Bangalore Review and Muse India among others.
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Grey, & other inflammable objects
It’s Diwali & there’s a feast. Snake tablets grow
into black unwanted things, bitter molasses-like
statutory warning-like, visuals of oral cancer
& other burning birds. Conversation-like,
like conversations, louder words, smiles put on
bright rivals for the rocket clawing at the night
with its final breath. Its final breath a whistle.
Chakri, whistlingly, spins like an angry little galaxy.
On third street, a car honks before a 1000-wala
both strange to waiting-
honk, boom.
honk, boom.
honk. boom.
All of this, of course, you cannot eat
the mound of plain steamed rice is golden brown now
the way you pour curd over it-
first the peak, then the fringes
& wait for them to meet.
The day after- newspaper bits blown off
ash & other grey feelings, & a sighing rain
sweeping everything away, dousing the lakshmis
the sparrows, Hercules Deluxes, Two Sounds
that rolled off, fell off, unlit into the grass.
~~
Where two things meet
do you remember all the bodies you’ve entered
I remember the house my grandparents moved
around in & by the house I mean the place where
the gabled roof met the sky in a line so distinct
that kingfishers perched on it waiting – waiting
by the house – I mean the rain on me & the rain
I wanted to be – I mean my grandma, her bones
firewood, snake-gods in her name & thighs &
the girl for whom the sun rose – by the house
the day I had not slept but had waded with frogs
& fireflies inside those frogs, to see the girl for
whom the sun rose drag a fallen palm leaf – her
eyes which saw mine guiltless – anywhere the leaf
falls, wherever the sun is vision my eyes are citizen.
~
ISACOUSTIC* 